[Outline]
At Nancheng University in early autumn, Jiang Yu from the computer science department and Shen Qinghe from the Chinese department met in an elective class on Buddhism. Jiang Yu was in the habit of copying the Heart Sutra in a quiet corner of the library, while Shen Qinghe always wore a faded bodhi-bead bracelet as she recited the Diamond Sutra along the gingko-lined path. Their eyes met at a Zen photography exhibition at the thousand-year-old Lingyin Temple, where sandalwood incense curled before the Buddha altar, mingling with feelings neither had voiced.
Senior Lin Shen waited outside the dormitory with roses for seven days. Shen Qinghe gave the bouquet to the Buddhist shrine as an offering. Junior Su Yan brought Jiang Yu breakfast in the rain, and he turned around and shared the food with the stray cats. On the night of the Winter Solstice, they both went to the temple to hear the bell. They glimpsed each other across the chanting crowd in the flickering candlelight. Each had saved the other's message wishing them well for the New Year, but their chat window remained blank.
During graduation season, a rainstorm knocked out the communications base station. Jiang Yu smashed his phone, which held the contact information of everyone in his class, while Shen Qinghe's SIM card was accidentally locked away in a pagoda containing Buddhist relics. Ten years later, at a Dharma gathering at Lingyin Temple, the faded bodhi bracelet suddenly broke. As the beads rolled away, one was stopped by a black prayer bead. Jiang Yu, now a lecturer in Buddhist studies, reunited with Shen Qinghe, a Buddhist lay practitioner, in the Guanyin Hall. Tucked inside a sutra was a gingko leaf he had never given her. Hidden in its veins were the Sanskrit words "Maha Prajna."
They agreed to make a pilgrimage on foot to Mount Wutai. At an elevation of three thousand meters, they exchanged annotated copies of the Platform Sutra. Shen Qinghe had circled "Let the mind arise without dwelling anywhere" in vermilion. Jiang Yu had added in ink, "Do not cling to appearances; remain unmoving in suchness." On a night when heavy snow closed the mountain, they kept watch until dawn on opposite sides of a prayer wheel. His monk's robe and her lay practitioner's robe mingled in the wind, yet they always kept three paces between them. In the end, they chose to part and live in separate thatched huts on Zhongnan Mountain.
